Q: My Brother encouraged me and my wife to join into his phone contract with Verizon, along with 4 others.
In order to reduce cell phone charges by having 5 or more devices on one bill. 20 months later we find out that he has been monitoring all of our calls, text messages, and tracking our daily movements. Is this legal? Is he responsible for our reasonable expectation of privacy that has been Violated? He did not have permission for surveillance of our movement or monitoring of our private communications
A:
It depends.
A cell phone account holder commonly has access to information concerning the usage of the cell phones on that account. That enables the account holder to monitor each device’s usage for unauthorized activity.
Smart devices can share their location with others allowing a friendly group of users to see roughly where another user’s cell phone is. This can help with the users themselves meeting or with locating a device that has been misplaced.
That type of access to information is customary and expected.
If your facts extend beyond that, I would have to carefully examine what was done and how it was done to determine if it is legal.
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